Social Foreground Effects, Caregiving Relationships, and Older Adults’ Cognitive Health

• In Event: Family Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4: Families and Aging

Abstract

Since the 1990s, diagnoses of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) have increased rapidly. To understand this, social scientists often point to Cumulative Inequality Theory, which demonstrates how parents transmit advantages and disadvantages to their children, in turn affecting their health. However, a growing body of research suggests this transmission also flows upwards. As a result, we investigate social determinants of cognitive health using a social foreground perspective. How does the social location of adult offspring predict their parents’ cognitive health? Specifically, is adult children’s educational attainment associated with parental cognitive health at later life? Using data from the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS), a nationally representative sample of adults 65 and older, we conduct propensity score matching to determine the effect of adult offsprings’ educational attainment on their parents’ cognitive health. Previous studies show that, even while accounting for selection effects, children’s college attainment predicts better cognitive outcomes for parents. Here, we replicate this finding while also accounting for relationship quality between adult offspring and their parents. Overall, our study contributes to a growing literature on heterogeneity in social foreground effects on parental cognitive health, shifting our understanding of the rise in ADRD over the last 30 years.

Authors

• Chandler Fairbanks, University at Buffalo

• Arivana Russell

• Kristen Schultz Lee, University at Buffalo

• Christopher Richard Dennison, University at Buffalo

• Ashley B Barr, University at Buffalo

• Rachel Zhang, University of Tampa

• Laura Sills, University at Buffalo

• Sophia Olsinski, University at Buffalo

• Gavin Glaser

• Elizabeth O'Boyle